Retention policies often control whether storage systems are to maintain, delete, and/or move data artifacts. For example, an organization (such as a business or government entity) may apply a 2-year retention policy to certain data, a 5-year retention policy to other data, and/or a legal hold to further data. In this example, each time-based retention policy may include, identify, and/or define a retention period during which the corresponding data is to remain stored within the storage system. In contrast, a legal hold may define and/or dictate an indefinite retention period during which the corresponding data is to remain stored within the storage system.
Once the retention period corresponding to a certain data artifact expires, one of the organization's computers may modify that data artifact as dictated by the retention policy. For example, the organization's computer may move the data artifact whose retention period has expired from a primary storage tier (such as a solid-state drive) to a secondary storage tier (such as a hard disk drive) in accordance with the retention policy. In another example, the organization's computer may totally delete the data artifact whose retention period has expired in accordance with the retention policy.
As technology advances and digital media increases, so too does the amount of data stored and/or maintained by organizations. These increases often drive up the costs associated with storing and/or maintaining data for the organizations. As a result, some organizations may have a need to reduce the amount of data stored and/or maintained by their systems long-term. Unfortunately, the organizations' administrators may be unable to accurately determine the most appropriate retention policy for each data artifact due to insufficient information and/or time constraints. As a result, these administrators may end up guessing and/or making a split-second judgment call regarding which retention policy to apply to certain data artifacts.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for applying content-based retention policies to data artifacts.